The Gelding

To everyone even tangentially interested in this Kabuki Theater surrounding gaming Legislation pending before Governor Patrick, here is a short ditty, very informative short ditty I should ad, sent to a great friend of this blog and forwarded along to me. I, in turn, present it to you.

The term POLICY ANALYSIS is critical here.  On the very first day of any public policy or public administration program in graduate school you are drilled in public policy analysis. It is not sacrosanct, and is very often slanted in its presentation, regardless of what more academic types want you to believe. And you don't need a PhD or even an MBA, MPA or MA to do it, or do it well, although it helps a great deal. Anyone with sufficient handle of the facts can present very solid and valid policy analysis. That's because it's essentially a compendium of objective facts presented to prove a hypothesis. While it always best to include as backup a very detailed analysis of numbers surrounding that hypothesis, the more rigorous the better, in many instances it is not the most important set of facts. It's all too often easy to use regression analysis and tests of those statistics to get lost in the forest and not see the tree of truth you are seeking, only the one's you wish everyone else to see. That's the work of reprehensible attorney's, not social scientists.

The NAICS codes they mention in the article are merely classification codes...sort of a "handbook" on how businesses are classified...it's a census for business and a summary statistic. Sometimes it is used to obfuscate more than educate. This is one of those times.

So, to all of my fellow "policy analysts", enjoy!


*  From bluemasscroup (Clyde Barrows - http://www.bluemassgroup.com/diary/16267/six-degrees-of-suffolk-downs) through a fellow traveler in Middleboro,
Gladys Kravitz :: Six Degrees of Suffolk Downs

The Gelding
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Next is another sort of celeb - a notorious one to those of us with two years of 'gaming' industry propaganda under our belts. UMass Dartmouth Professor Clyde Barrows. The man who turned counting license plates in Connecticut into a lilfe-sustaining career.

Clyde Barrows, who is quoted in the media at least once a month, is to the gambling industry what Silas was to Opus Dei in the Da Vinci Code.

But this morning it's not license plates he's here to talk about. No, today, he begins by referencing the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) - which apparently is the "statistical classification standard underlying all establishment-based economic statistics in the U.S. Canada, & Mexico."

Not only that, boys and girls, but the "NAICS classifies business establishments into twenty different Sectors and assigns each business establishment in North America a six-digit code."

And guess what? Under NAICS Major Sector Code 71, otherwise known as Arts, Entertainment & Recreation, following sub sector 711 (Performing Arts, Spectator Sports and Related Industries) and right after sub sector 712 (Museum, Historical Sites & Similar Institutions) is none other than sub sector 713 (Amusement, Gambling & Recreation)

It's official. Deval was right. Gambling really is entertainment!

Because if the NAICS says it - then it must be true.

Clyde, nevertheless, fails to mention this would also imply that Cockfighting falls under sub sector 711 (spectator sports) while Brothels and Crack Houses (Amusement and Recreation) would share sub sector 713 with Gambling.
But the message is clear. Gambling is just another legitimate pastime, like going to a Celtics game or visiting Plymouth Plantation. You can feel good about it.

Oh, and another thing. Gambling is pretty.
In his Power Point presentation and handout, Clyde uses some really slick pictures of Foxwoods casino. This is one of them:

Sexy, huh? This is the kind of photo you use of a casino when you really want to sell it.
This is a less flattering angle.

Mohegan Sun actually wants to deposit something like this less than a mile from downtown Palmer, Massachusetts. (Hey - is that Clyde down there in the parking lot!)

Barrows, who co-authored a paper titled, The Persistence of Pseudo-Facts in the U.S. Casino Debate: The Case of Massachusetts, in which he insists that you can trust him because he's a policy analyst while everyone else is merely part of "the chattering class", doesn't want you to see what Foxwoods really looks like. He would like us to be reassured by comforting advertising photos of luminous Cinderella castles rising from enchanted forests.

Clyde would prefer the Senators not see the many homes in the area for sale, the proximity of elementary schools to the casino, the lack of local businesses, the neighboring single family homes used for "hot bunking" multitudes of low-wage casino workers, the road trash or the ever present exhaust-belching tour buses which idle in the parking lots for hours on cold days. In fact, that would be downright counter-productive to that whole "entertainment" theme he's got going on today.

If Clyde Barrows is a 'policy analyst', then I'm not really an 'activist blogger' - I'm a 'non-lobbyist.'
Because Clyde is a salesman, and everyone knows it - even the Senators and even the 'gaming' industry. And right now he's trying to sell us a vacuum cleaner. One that will suck the money out of our pockets while promising us an easier, better life.

When Clyde's sales pitch presentation is finally over, but before he can manage to slither off, Senator Tucker asks, "as someone who is quoted on this subject more than anyone else, can you tell us, how are you compensated?"
He is paid, he explains, by the UMass Center for Policy Analysis, though... once or twice there may have been that thing for the Rhode Island Building Trades Council, and then there was that other thing for the Rhode Island Senate something or other and way back in '97 he picked up a little work for the Wampanoags.

What he doesn't mention is that those 'things' were part of efforts to build casinos.

And he fails entirely to mention a job he took just this past November for the Las Vegas-based Olympia Group, to sell a casino to Oxford County Maine.
Poor Clyde. He's conflicted between his desire to be a respected policy analyst with a valuable opinion, and his need to continue in his role as an assiduous paid shill for the gambling industry.

Martha wasn't kidding when she said the public needs to know more about the people who want to put casinos in our backyards